The Penguin episode 3 ending explained: Nadia Maroni gets the drop on Oz and things go left!

With The Penguin, every time we learn something about Sofia and Oz's relationship--which is shrouded in mystery and covered in darkness--I desperately want a flashback episode. "Bliss" partly functions as one for Victor as it's revealed how he lost his family the day of Riddler's attack.

That key information sets up his episode arc as having to make a choice between what his father would have wanted for him and what he wants for himself. Ultimately, Victor chooses the life that will get him out of the cycle of poverty he was born into. And it's that choice that puts him in a position to save Oz and, in the process, screw over Sofia. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's rewind.

Outside of Victor, "Bliss" is about Oz and Sofia setting up the operation for their new venture. The episode is even named after the drug. The two do this weird dance where they're each marshalling for power--Sofia for all of it and Oz for equal partnership (though he fully intends on getting her killed by her family). The ghost that sits between them is their past which is brought up in cloaked sentences.

They don't out right and say what happened but it was obviously a betrayal and it hurt Sofia. We learn that Oz used to be her driver. There's an intimacy to their interactions that speaks to them being close in the past. It's endlessly intriguing and a tad maddening that the story keeps brushing up against a wound that we know little about aside from Sofia refuting the name "The Hangman" and Oz throwing her out to the wolves to secure a better life for himself.

It all comes to a head at the Triad club where they've secured a deal with the Dai Li to distribute their drug. At this point in "Bliss," Oz believes he's lost Victor. The two had a falling out in the bathroom with Oz cuttingly telling the kid that you don't get an award for dying in the projects. Essentially getting at the root of the difference between himself and Victor's father, Juan.

Oz doesn't believe in good or bad, he believes in opportunity. You make choices when you're hustling and when you're fighting to survive. Being noble or honorable isn't going to put food in your belly or money in your pocket, he has no use for it. You get yours, that's all that matters.

This is a very important characteristic that plays out in spectacular fashion at the end of the episode. Oz finds Sofia outside and the two have an emotional talk about their past. Earlier, she had asked him was selling her out to her father worth it and Oz wouldn't answer the question. He finally does in this scene. To him, yes, it was. He got 44 Below out of the deal and the run of the Falcones' drops operation. He's not sorry about doing what he had to in order to move up in the world and get a real piece of the action.

It's a reminder that Oz is a have-not. Sofia's right that he's not a made man. He can't climb up the ranks of the family. It's why Johnny Viti treats him the way he does. They believe he's beneath them and they consider whatever "scraps" they give him to be chucking him a bone. Oz is aware of that and so is Sofia, but she's the only one who sees him for who he is. And, for as entitled as she is because she's a Falcone, she's not in any better of a position because she's a woman in a man's world.

They both chafe at the reality of their circumstances and have fought to get to the position they feel they deserve. Bliss was Sofia's idea not Alberto's. It's a sophisticated notion using the substance that was given to her in Arkham to keep her docile to take control of Gotham's streets. As she has shown time and again, she has the intelligence, the wherewithal, and the bloodlust to run the family but she's constantly overlooked, demeaned, and belittled by men trying to keep her in "her place."

But Sofia does mean something to Oz. She did in the past and she does now. Oz is the most manipulative character in this series. He's slippery like an eel with a silver tongue, and Sofia clocks this. She says as much that it's hard to discern whether he's just saying what you want to hear. She asserts that she's not the young girl he knew anymore but in some ways she is.

She hears him out when he's near tears apologizing for what happened to her. While Oz doesn't regret what he did to help himself, he is remorseful for how it blew back on Sofia. He didn't think Carmine would put his own daughter in Arkham. Personally, in spite of Oz's manipulations, I do believe his apology was sincere. Presumably, so did Sofia but it didn't stop him from turning on a dime when Nadia Maroni rolled up with her goons, steaming mad.

It's such a quick sequence, so "Bliss" doesn't explicitly tell us why Nadia is fuming but we can put the pieces together ourselves. Oz has been playing mole for the Maronis. He was supposed to be making it easier for them to take the Falcones down and reclaim control of the city. But in this episode, he burned the leverage he'd given them on Viti by using it himself to blackmail the man into calling the Dai Li and vouching for his and Sofia's operation.

Going all in on bliss, and getting the Triad involved, put him in direct opposition with the Maronis. It also likely tipped them off that he had no real intention on helping them long term, he was just saving his own skin and waiting for a better opportunity.

By the time Victor returns with his car, having driven to watch his girlfriend Graciela get on a bus out of town to a "better life" without him, Oz and Sofia are being held at gunpoint. Victor rams the car into a goon, much to Oz's delight who immediately gets in the passenger seat and instructs the kid to drive. At least Victor was thinking about Sofia because he asked about her but Oz told him to leave without her.

It seems sincerity and betrayal go hand-in-hand with Oz. He's still not above hanging Sofia out to dry in order to live and fight another day. Leaving her behind, however, will have consequences. That's for sure. The first being that Nadia could and likely would tell Sofia that it was Oz who killed Alberto. A Sofia Falcone with absolutely no one to trust sounds like a very dangerous prospect indeed.

The Penguin airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and streams on Max.